You see, having good usability is critical if you want to keep readers at your site …and in this post I’m gonna give you my top 4 tips to improving your blogs usability and readability, to do just that.

The Top 4 Blog Design Tips

#1. “Whitespace” – I love white space (..as you can probably tell..) It’s a term used by designers to describe the space between 2 different elements. For example, you header & your navigation bar… or your sidebar & your blog posts. Increasing the amount of whitespace between elements (..with moderation, of course..) will make your site look cleaner and more readable.

Although “whitespace” doesn’t necessarily have to be the color WHITE – I feel WHITE makes a site much more appealing to the viewer. Take a look at these somewhat popular sites that use this concept of ‘whitespace’ very effectively:

#2. Simple & Obvious – Don’t go crazy with widgets and plugins & ads – it’ll drive your viewers CRAZY!! The best way to drive visitors away from your blog is to have a cluttered, chaotic blog with so many different things fighting for their attention.

I suggest you review your widgets and plugins every month to remove those that aren’t being used, or aren’t being effective. You might also have those cool little plugins that people might not know what to do with or how to use, so it’s best to only have the obvious ones that don’t take up to much space.

#3. Above The Fold - When designing your sidebar, you want to keep the important stuff up top. For example, your intro-video, opt-in form, & social network links. These are very important to me but, of course, it’ll vary from person to person.

It all depends what the purpose of your blog is and what you want your viewers to see first.

#4. Give Your Blog “The TEST” – Every now and then I ask one of my friends, or relatives to just poke around my blog. You’ll be surprised at the useful information you get from performing this test.

Somethings you want to look out for, while you sit right next to them with a notepad, are:

• What do they click first?
• What do they focus on the most?
• Ask them: How does the site make them feel?

This is really good insight on what a first time visitor does when they get to your blog.

Are There Any Other Design Tips You’d Like To Add?

Please, leave them in the comments below – and if you enjoyed this post please leave me your feedback, too. Remember to facebook share it, tweet it, digg it, & stumble it if you found this could help others – I’d really appreciate it.

Talk Soon,

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